Tuesday, August 24, 2010

DO EYES LIE? SMILES DECEIVE?

Here's a statement you can either accept, reject, or ponder: "The way you get to know yourself is by the expressions on other people's faces, because that's the only thing that you can see." Comes from the balladeering American poet Gil Scott-Heron.

While he makes outrageously good sense, he raises an old haunt with me: Who is the real me....?

If you care to ponder this, you may bump into the same perplexities I do. Is it really the Me I see in those other faces? Or is it the unvarnished Me I see in the morning mirror? Or just maybe is it the Me I still keep dreaming of being?

My best guess is it's all three Me's, depending on when and where I find myself. At work...at home...at church...at the company picnic....at the family Christmas...stepping off the commuter train on another Monday morning....or going to bed a the end of another tough day. Like a diamond's many different facets, I am all these facets when seen from each of these particular places and angles. Yet, still the same stone.

OK, I think I can live with that explanation. However, today's culture complicates it. Consider the intrusion of so many other faces in my life! There are all those perfect-faces in the movies which explode on the screen humbling you as if standing before the "David" or "Venus"...all those relentlessly smiling-faces in TV commercials insisting you too will smile if only you buy this today...all those artificial reality-faces on shows pretending these absurdly staged scenes are real life.

And now -- now science brings us yet another face to contend with: The botox-face! Studies show that botoxed faces have deadened muscles which can't react exactly as do regular muscles. Thus they may send others slightly skewed emotional messages. Messages that can confuse, even enrage.

Well, frankly I'm seriously confused as it is. So I'm giving up faces for the duration. All things considered, mine is hardly worth arguing about!


4 comments:

  1. Good points stated, as usual, Jack. I think we all have our own impression of who, and what we are, which may not be as 'others' see us.
    We think we are funny, and give good advice to others, but we may not be as funny as we think, and possibly insulting to others, and our 'advice', may not be 'wanted' by others in the first place.
    So, we are 'never' what 'we' think!
    All we can do in life, is to do the best we can, to our own standards, with the hope that we can come a little close to our own opinion of ourselves.
    One of the things on this subject that makes me sweat, is the way that people in the USA say, 'Have A Nice Day' every time you pay a bill, or leave some area...without giving the impression that they 'mean it', and its clear its all part of their training...they might as well read it off an 'idiot sheet' as they do on TV shows. And, even worse, is that whatever happens in the USA, happens in our Country, as people 'copy' what they see, and hear, on the TV shows that every Country is forced to see, as the majority of TV is American made. I will add that some shows are good, but we all finish up speaking, and acting the same way. Without true feeling....

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  2. Alfie ~ I don't think we disagree on very much if anything. Living as long as we have through the times we have sorta shapes our perceptions.

    As for the Americanization of the world, yeah I know what you mean. It's regrettable, because so much of this fare is such a poor representation of what's best here. Take it from me, Alfie, America is NOT Hollywood. At least most of the time...

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  3. Jack, I don't care what anyone says, I still love Joan Rivers!

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  4. Jerry, I'm glad, because some has to love her....!

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